OT - Which Laptop?

FeynmanC

Dear Hive Mind

My Mrs has bagged a client that needs her to crunch a lot of data and the old laptop she's using (mine!) is taking forever to do it. It's 6 years old and a Centrino Duo 1.66GHz with 1Gb ram - time for an upgrade.

It'll be used for email, web and running excel spreadsheets mainly. (She has a macbook pro but excel isn't stable for her, she says).

As I've not bought any computer equipment since that laptop i'm a bit out of the loop on what to get and where to get it from.

Any suggestions of online retailers, recommendations of products or what to avoid?

ride_whenever

why isn't excel stable for her on her macbook? That'd be the laptop of choice tbh, macs just work.

kelsen

I'd say a hybrid or a road bike if she's staying mainly on road. A CX if there's a mixture of on and off-road.

(+1 for the Mac)

alfablue

www.ebuyer.com are generally amongst the cheapest, good range, reliable shop. Asus laptops are well built and specified for the money. Have paid nearly £2k for a Sony, but needed 6 monthly trips across Europe for repairs! Lasted 4 years, so that's £500 per year! Now I reckon £400 is enough to spend, and if it lasts 3 years I'm more than happy.

Currently using a Samsung x120 - small, light, handles office software fine.

CiB

An old laptop running something like Linux Mint with Open Office installed instead of Windows + Office should easily run what she's after - OO has an Excel-compatible equivalent and is as free as Linux Mint is, being included with the OS. Linux is a much lighter install and runs nicely on older kit.

Give it a go tonight. If you don't fancy it go and find a laptop anyway.

Glad to have helped.

The Rookie

Both my girls, and one's BF have Tosh' satellites (circa £350), no probs, super fast and very stable.

The wife wanted a Lappy for surfing 'only' so has a cheaper Acer (tesco, was £289) and that has proved great excepet that the graphics struggle with a particular game she has now decided she wants to play on it as well!

Simon

roundthebend

Well worth looking for the Argos Clearance Bargains shop on ebay. They sell new/reconditioned laptops from Acer/Toshiba/Fujitsu all at very good prices and with good warranties.

I was looking at some very good spec Toshiba's for around £350 recently, though I opted for a cheaper desktop in the end because I don't need it to be portable.

davmaggs

It sounds like her usage requires an entry-level laptop. Hardware has become so powerful now that browsing the web and using Office can be done easily by any machine on the market, it's only when you start media editing that you worry about higher-end specs

I really wouldn't bother going for anything flash or worrying about brand. All PCs are made from off the shelf parts and will work just as well. The quality of the screen is very noticable if you are doing any kind of medi editing.

Go for a Dell studio or something from Aldi or Tesco. I wouldn't bother with the expense of Apple or the hassle of open source when £300-£400 gets you sorted with a new machine with warranty.

lost_in_thought

I recently bought a new lappy, 150gb HD, 4gb RAM, 512MB dedicated Nvidia gfx (which she doesn't need) +W7 (extra) from amazon.co.uk, just over £400 all in.

It also has a numberpad, which I just love and she may too - great for data entry. It's a compaq presario cq 61.

Porgy

lost_in_thought wrote:

I recently bought a new lappy, 150gb HD, 4gb RAM, 512MB dedicated Nvidia gfx (which she doesn't need) +W7 (extra) from amazon.co.uk, just over £400 all in.

It also has a numberpad, which I just love and she may too - great for data entry. It's a compaq presario cq 61.

blimey! I just bought one of them - for about £370 - good innit?

lost_in_thought

Porgy wrote:

lost_in_thought wrote:

I recently bought a new lappy, 150gb HD, 4gb RAM, 512MB dedicated Nvidia gfx (which she doesn't need) +W7 (extra) from amazon.co.uk, just over £400 all in.

It also has a numberpad, which I just love and she may too - great for data entry. It's a compaq presario cq 61.

blimey! I just bought one of them - for about £370 - good innit?

It really is! Do do do get the W7 upgrade, it runs fantastically and is such an improvement on Vista, mine was £370 too, but the upgrade's another £50-ish. So worth it!

Porgy

lost_in_thought wrote:

Porgy wrote:

lost_in_thought wrote:

I recently bought a new lappy, 150gb HD, 4gb RAM, 512MB dedicated Nvidia gfx (which she doesn't need) +W7 (extra) from amazon.co.uk, just over £400 all in.

It also has a numberpad, which I just love and she may too - great for data entry. It's a compaq presario cq 61.

blimey! I just bought one of them - for about £370 - good innit?

It really is! Do do do get the W7 upgrade, it runs fantastically and is such an improvement on Vista, mine was £370 too, but the upgrade's another £50-ish. So worth it!

ah - mine came with W7. 8)

roger_merriman

This is a software problem than hardware, namely excel being unstable.

what version of office is it? some of the newer versions of mac office have been sub par...

other options are
http://www.openoffice.org/
http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php

they are fine office suite's but they are not MS office, what sort of task is it?

other options are virtual machines such as.
http://www.parallels.com/uk/
http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/

redvee

A place worth looking at is Novatech in Portishead. They might not be as cheap as some online etailers but do have the advantage of being able to order online and collect from the store.

FeynmanC

Thanks for all the opensource suggestions, but she needs to run customer's existing excel files, including macros.

Mac doesn't like VBA and openoffice says that many macros will need to be rewritten, so that's why they are out (we did look into it to save the money on software)

My laptop currently has Office 2000 on it so really needs an upgrade to the latest version to be completely compatible with the customer too.

Top runner that i've seen so far (and Which? like them too) are the Acer Aspire 5740 range, with an i3 chip and a numberpad for data entry too.

Her laptop before she got the mac was an Acer and we liked the build quality and value of that one.

Just got to decide the details of the spec and find who does the best price, then see if we can get a deal with the Office 2007 Standard upgrade software.

At least I get a new laptop out of the deal, as she needs it in the day when i'm out at work and I get to use it in the evening.

roger_merriman

FeynmanC wrote:

Thanks for all the opensource suggestions, but she needs to run customer's existing excel files, including macros.

Mac doesn't like VBA and openoffice says that many macros will need to be rewritten, so that's why they are out (we did look into it to save the money on software)

My laptop currently has Office 2000 on it so really needs an upgrade to the latest version to be completely compatible with the customer too.

Top runner that i've seen so far (and Which? like them too) are the Acer Aspire 5740 range, with an i3 chip and a numberpad for data entry too.

Her laptop before she got the mac was an Acer and we liked the build quality and value of that one.

Just got to decide the details of the spec and find who does the best price, then see if we can get a deal with the Office 2007 Standard upgrade software.

At least I get a new laptop out of the deal, as she needs it in the day when i'm out at work and I get to use it in the evening.

Microsoft removed macros from mac office 1 if not 2 versions a go, so yes unless you get hold of a older version.

this said a VM should work well. assuming the mac is reasonably beefy.

CiB

If you want Office 2007 you could do worse than check out Software 4 Students. You obviously need to be able to enter the name of a student and a valid education establishment (it prompts if you mistype it) to qualify, but under £40 for the whole sounds reasonable. Mine works fine; paid £36 last November for it.

FeynmanC

Good idea CiB but apparently the student version says that it's for non-commercial use only on the files and, as one of the clients she's pitching at is an industry body in the tech industry, she has to play by the rules.

If you know different please let me know though

roundthebend

If you like Acer then this might be a good buy:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ACER-ASPIRE-AS573 ... 4cef0ca7bc

I think you'd probably prefer a 17in screen though for spreadsheets with lots of rows/columns.

Maybe this one: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ACER-ASPIRE-7535- ... 5191f3fd36

Bigger screen but less hard disk and RAM. However, I think it would be overkill for your needs anyway.

These only come with Vista which is a shame. W7 is so much better.

andrewc3142

She has a macbook pro but excel isn't stable for her, she says

I'd look first at why that is. I have a macbook pro (15", 2ish years old) and use excel very extensively - for finance, preparing management accounts for clients, organising large volumes of data, etc, etc. Works without any problems at all. And a great, fast machine generally.

No visual basic now for the mac version, so no macros, but this won't be supported for long in the Windows version either. And good thing too IMO. If a spreadsheet needs VB then the job probably shouldn't be on a spreadsheet anyway.

The only gripe I have with these machines is that Apple seems to have gone over to glossy screens only and I'm not really convinced about them. I find the mat ones nicer when working for 5, 6, 12 hours a day and less reflection when using on trains, etc.
Hope they reverse this before I have to replace mine.

sarajoy

The Dell outlet might be a good place to look (it's a nightmare finding the link though, hope this works): http://outlet.euro.dell.com/topics/glob ... INSP&s=dfh

Or alternatively a good reseller of refurb laptops - the warranties are often still good 3-year jobbies: http://www.mcscom.co.uk/section.php?xSec=17

il_principe

Am I missing something here? Go to Crucial.com, select the system scanner, buy whatever RAM it suggests. 1GB is naff all these days, more Ram may well solve the issue. I'm a Mac user and don't have stability issues in Excel. However I do prefer Open Office (as prev suggested) which is stable and v easy to use...

FeynmanC

Thanks all.

I'd considered more ram IP, but the rest of the system was getting very knackered. It sounded like a jet taking off most of the time, was full of dust and pet hair, the audio out socket had broken, it got burning hot on the lap and weighs half a tonne, so it is being converted to a little play machine for me to try Linux for the first time on

So i've got an Acer Aspire 5740 with an i3 chip, 4GB ram, 320GB drive for £549 that's sat at home waiting for me to complete the setup tonight, and a copy of Office 2000 Standard (upgrade) which cost £200 (ouch! but it is legit).

Knowing the type of stats work she'll end up doing and the clients she's working for the 4gb and i3 will make a big difference, and past experience has shown me that if it feels fast now, she'll be screaming at it for seeming so slow after a month as she starts to take it for granted lol.

It does mean that I have to start saving for the N+1 again though

il_principe

Either way Macbook all the way. We've had 2 laptops die in the office in the last 2 weeks. ! Samsung 1 Dell, bith Windoze, both less than 2 years old. I'm typing this on a 54 year old Macbook which I've just ordered more RAM for. Have a Macbook pro at home. Never had any probs with either. Yeah they cost more, but IME they work better. I'm never going back to a windows only machine again.

Also Leopard's Spaces and Expose functions are sheer fcuking genius.

CiB

FeynmanC wrote:

Knowing the type of stats work she'll end up doing and the clients she's working for the 4gb and i3 will make a big difference, and past experience has shown me that if it feels fast now, she'll be screaming at it for seeming so slow after a month as she starts to take it for granted lol.

If you want it to stay in tip top shape, do yourself a favour and delete all the junk that it comes with - MS Works, all the trial offers & shortcuts that you'll never use, and remove as many things as you can from the startup (run MSConfig and see what runs at start up).

Even better, do a complete wipe & reload of Windows so that you're starting with a blank canvas. Then download CCleaner & run it every so often to keep the junk & gubbings down to a minimum. You'll be glad you did.

Sounds like a good laptop there.

Oh - enjoy the Linux experience. I'd go for Mint personally, just because I like it.